ABSTRACT
The Sixth Amendment to the Constitution requires that criminal defendants be tried in proceedings that are open to the public, and while qualities such as "fairness" and "impartiality" are not specified in the amendment, those factors are nevertheless mentioned in any discussion involving the rights of the accused. The main concern associated with excessive pre-trial publicity is that it may contaminate the pool of potential jurors. A trial judge may sequester jurors during a trial to protect them from newspaper and television accounts, but one cannot sequester a jury during the lengthy period of time that it takes to run the course of pre-trial proceedings, because the jury has not yet been selected. In a change of venire, which is the opposite of a change of venue, the trial remains in the same courtroom but the jury is brought in from another community.
